Should we be "selling high" on anyone? Can we?

[Yobogoya!]

Something that's been on my mind for a while now is that while Beane has done a fairly good job of cutting losses and getting something for a guy we don't need/want anymore, he hasn't ever really "sold high" on an upper shelf type of player -- the sole exception being the fire sale we had year 1 / 2017 when McD and Beane decided to dump anyone who wasn't buying into their culture immediately. That's fine.

 

But consider that we might have identified TreMaine Edmunds as someone we weren't going to make the top paid linebacker in the NFL before the '22 season started -- might we have traded him and gotten something back? Instead we spent all off-season monitoring whether we spent ourselves out of a comp pick for the guy.

 

Consider that Gabe Davis never turned it on last year and moving him prior to this past season for a day 2 pick and signing Hopkins in his place would have had a huge effect on this season -- how many interceptions wouldn't have been thrown? How many big plays might D Hop have made for us? AND we could have possibly had a future pick to help restock moving forward. (maybe I'm overvaluing him going into this season, but I think his big games and big play potential could easily have gotten a rd3 out of someone)

 

Unfortunately most of our "top shelf" type of talent right now is buried into their contracts with dead money. Diggs and Miller are unmovable, even if a team wanted them. Honestly coming into this off season we might not even have anyone of intrinsically high value -- those "pro bowl snubs" outside of Allen don't look like they were snubbed very much at this point. Might be we just don't have that level of talent some of us thought we did.

 

But going forward McBeane might benefit from identifying they aren't going to keep a guy and making a move for top value while they can -- it certainly hasn't hurt KC after they did so with Tyreek.